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Daria holds an Undergraduate Degree from the Socio-Economic faculty at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosow Moscow State University (2010). During her study Daria worked in the Russian-Arab Business Council; helped in organising Russian-Syrian business forums and International Political Conferences in Moscow. She studied Arabic in Damascus University in 2009. She then received her MA in Politics at the same university (2012) and in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh (2012). She spent several weeks travelling in Syria in 2012, collecting information for her MA dissertation on Russian-Syrian relations. Daria has several publications in Russian. She spent several months in Alexandria in 2013, studying Arabic and Islamic faith and teaching English. Daria is currently a PhD student in the Department of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland, UK). Her thesis is titled: “Self-Identification in the Context of Political Instability: An Examination of the Impact of the Uprising on Syrian Christian Identities”. This research includes fieldwork in Lebanon, Russia and Armenia with Syrian Christian refugees, as well as with churches, NGOs and government organisations helping them.

Research Interests: Politics of the Middle East, especially Syria; state formation and identity changes; Christian identity in the Arab States; government politics towards religious minorities; authoritarian regimes and democratisation.